Oh wow! Thanks for taking the time to write this very comprehensive review Siset. I don't mind the criticisms, actually I do encourage it! Really helps me see other's perspective.
Oh and I'll respond to some of your points if that's alright:
"All the BA art is your own work"
It wasn't only me who did the art, my buddy drew Hoshino's sprite mostly, I only did the animation, the title screen art and the enemy drone's sprite.
"It's really hard to gauge how far your punches go in general, as you have such a tiny range, but it's nearly impossible to gauge it when facing up or down and they're obscured"
I do have to agree with that, maybe its the drawback of the gameplay's format or maybe I have played too much Touhou that my sense of hitboxes is a little bit wack and off. Either way, it still needs more improvement. If I do continue developing this game, this is definitely one of my top improvement priority!
"Having tiles on the ground might help give a sense of depth for this"
That is a good idea, currently I am split on how I could achieve better visual depth. Whether I would continue using tilemaps for the environment or go full "hand-drawn".
"It's a little weird to me that all the obstacles are kinda not really there. Sometimes they block their view, sometimes they don't."
I did have some trouble with Godot's tilemapping and obstacle detection that I had to outright disable most of their obstacle AI for this release, sorry about that. That is, however, going to the list of things to improve.
"But the bullets don't stop for anything. Even if you hide behind a wall"
This is one artifact that I forgot to set back to regular bullets, that is the experimental "piercing-variant bullets" that I end up not using at the moment and weren't meant for the level included in the prototype's release. My bad there...
"The drones also have this tendency to fire during takedowns (which should probably be shorter anyway)"
I don't quite understand. Can I ask for a more detailed explanation on this if possible?
"a little after they die, which can screw you over."
If you mean they keep shooting while in their death frames/animation. I intentionally left that as a design choice where the drones do a "takedown misfire" like the turrets in the portal series as a punishment for doing a non-stealthy takedown. Though I can see it becoming too unfair. I'll do note that. Maybe it'll instead become a hardcore difficulty feature instead.
"You could make a big improvement by replenishing health with these pick-ups"
Another good idea. I debated on this early on and in my opinion, it might make the game too easy since items are and will be a big part of the progression. Maybe a difficulty option where items heal might be better or just outright have healing items. Either way, I will balance the game to the best of my ability if I do end up continuing development on it.
"I've been playing this game for 2 days and I couldn't beat that crowded room because of the bullet issues."
(two days?!) Oh, the issue might be misunderstanding how the gameplay flows. For context, I intended this part of the game to go for a stealth approach like hitting the drone from behind *coughmgsparodycough*, if you break stealth, the game punishes you by making the enemies follow you until they lose sight and lose interest on you (which can take somewhat long).
The strategy involves hitting the drones in that room one or two hits at a time then ducking out of their sights. I tried to imply on the going stealthy part through Hoshino's dialogue but I'm guessing she didn't made it obvious enough. At the end, I can say this can be considered as a balancing issue that needs ironing out on my part.
Anyways, thanks again for the review and thanks for hosting this event. This pretty much gave me that little push to get this out there. Hoping I gave enough answers to your critiques.
Best Regards,
Kenda